B-movie material in the hands of an A-list director

Rating: 7/10 (18 March 2018)

I didn't ever get to the theater to see this, but my daughter insisted we should watch it on her DVD copy just this month. Sure enough it's (a) completely stereotypical for big smash-'em-up SF action films with giant monsters and robots, and (b) somehow (and I'm still not sure how exactly) vastly more fun than the dreary Transformers movies that it invites comparison with. Some pro reviewers say it's because there's a good, well developed dose of human interest that the Transformers lack. I think that's part of it -- the three principals played by Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, and (stunningly beautiful) Rinko Kikuchi are engaging and worth rooting for -- but somehow that's not all. Director Guillermo del Toro just knows his way around a scene and how to stich them together into a sweeping narrative.
Of course there are gaping holes in the logic. Nothing much stands to reason if you look at it closely. As one example, every one of the Kaiju (alien monster) vs. Jaeger ( human-piloted giant warrior bot) battles happens in or near large cities where massive destruction and carnage can and does ensue. If this has been going on for years now as the plot says, why in h*** is anyone at all still living in coastal cities like Hong Kong or San Francisco? But without that, the fight scenes just wouldn't be as photogenic.
Never mind. The bottom line is that this is B-movie material in the hands of an A-list director who has made it rise above its limitations, at least for the time you're watching. One wonders what the filmmakers of the original 1950's monster movies (Godzilla, Rodan, and the rest) would have made of this. At very least they'd have envied all the CGI tools that can be mobilized today.